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Genealogist John Anderson Brayton is one of our leading experts on North Carolina, Virginia, and royal genealogy. Mr. Brayton is the author of more than a score of books and numerous articles in highly respected periodicals, including the New England Historical and Genealogical Register and the North Carolina Genealogical Journal. The author has cultivated a broad knowledge of 17th- and 18th-century sources, and his publications are known for their extraordinary attention to detail. Mr. Brayton's findings are always accompanied by faithful transcriptions of the original sources upon which they are based. Not one to accept older scholarship at face value, his findings have debunked myths and mistakes in any number of older genealogy publications.

Now available from Mr. Brayton is Colonial Families of Surry and of Isle of Wight Counties, Virginia, Volume 10: Bridger of Godalming, Surrey; Slimbridge, Gloucestershire; and Virginia. The central figure in the study is Col. Joseph Bridger of Gloucestershire, England, and Isle of Wight, Virginia, who died in 1686 and whose provenance had puzzled researchers for most of the 20th century. This new work, which features John Brayton's usual fastidious research, presents the Bridger ancestry with the author’s trademark interspersing of genealogical descents, transcribed source records, and historical commentary.

Following are some of the highlights of the Bridger volume in Mr. Brayton's own words: "This monograph is a follow-up of a genealogical chart generously presented to me by Barbara Dossett of Dallas, TX. It contained a skeleton outline of Joseph Bridger's ancestry for five generations, plus the double connections to the Elliots . . . The parish registers of Godalming have been published, with a fragment pertaining to sixteenth-century Bridger ancestry, which facilitated research enormously. The probate records of the Archdeaconry of Surrey had recently been abstracted, indexed, and published . . . and these were likewise invaluable. . . Any study of the ancestry of Joseph Bridger must include a history of the parish of Godalming--the two are inextricably mixed with the evolution of the wool industry which so radically changed the face of the southwest shire of Surrey."

Volume 10 in this series includes a comprehensive bibliography, name and location indexes, and, as a special bonus, a suitable-for-framing chart of the Bridgers' English ancestry.

See also the other volumes in this series:

Volume 1: The Five Thomas Harrises of Isle of Wight County, Virginia
Volume 2: The Descendants of Robert Harris of Isle of Wight, County, Virginia
Volume 3: The Court Orders of Isle of Wight County, Virginia, October 1693-May 1695
Volume 4: The Descendants of Capt. John Jennings of Isle of Wight County, Virginia
Volume 5: Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Deeds, Wills, Cjonveyances, Book A, 1628-1659
Volume 6: Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Will & Deed Book 1 (1662-1688) [and] Abstracts of Deeds, 1715, p. 1-32
Volume 7: The Pitt Family of Bristol, Gloucester, Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Isle of Wight County, Virginia
Volume 8: Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Will & Deed Book 2 (1666-1719)
Volume 9: The Family of George Williams, died 1672, of Isle of Wight Co., VA